


South Side of the Sky

by fait_hunter



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Animal Cruelty / Animal Violence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Not Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-05 14:19:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6707767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fait_hunter/pseuds/fait_hunter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam squats down to his level and extends a hand. “Listen, just let me-”</p><p>    The metal hand snatches his forearm and jerks him forward so their noses nearly touch. The Soldier’s eyes still have that wild animal look, like a pissed-off leopard. “Don't,” he snarls. “I'll fucking kill you, understand? I’ll kill you. Stay away from me.”</p><p>    He shoves Sam away, using the momentum to attain a standing position. “Don't waste your time.” The Winter Soldier turns to leave, teeters briefly, and falls flat on his face. Sam waits a second. He doesn't get up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Sam’s mouth is sawdust-dry, just tacky enough to stick painfully to itself when he tries to swallow. His head feels... wrong, somehow, but he’s not sure he could say what kind of wrong it is. Kinda scrambled, maybe. Like a snow globe that’s been shook up.

His surroundings are quiet enough, at least. There’s a little window in the door, head-height, but when Sam tries to look through it, the light hammers at the back of his skull. Better to occupy himself with the room he’s in: small, cement, about 3 paces square. The floor he’s sitting on is cool, and for some reason there’s hay, just strewn all over, like a barn. There’s no furniture, only a big metal dog bowl on the floor. Must be for a really big dog, he guesses. Or maybe a bunch of dogs, that share. There’s no dogs here right now, though- just Sam, alone, sitting with his back against the wall.

That’s weird though, right? It’s weird to be sitting on the floor in some dog room with the lights turned down. He scoots himself over to the bowl, and it’s full of water, and the water smells okay, tastes okay, feels cool and wonderful in his throat. He’d been somewhere else, before. Someone helped him get here, walked him through the too-bright hallway so he wouldn’t fall down. He doesn’t remember who.  

Before the hallway, he’d been at... a gala? Some kind of press thing. He was supposed to give an interview but he wasn’t dressed right- you gotta clean up for these things, but he was in his tactical gear, minus the body armor and the wings. His clothes were a mess of twigs and feathers and bird shit and blood. He’d wanted to change, but the reporters insisted. Just a few questions.

At the time he’d been pissed at Tony for throwing him to the press when he wasn’t ready, but the more he thinks about it, the less sure he is that it was Tony’s fault. Tony’s an asshole but he’s not an _asshole;_ it's not his style to force someone into the spotlight if they don't want it. The more Sam thinks about it, the less he’s sure he saw Tony there at all.

When he _really_ thinks about it, the whole thing seems less like something that actually happened, and more like one of those dreams where you have to re-take your junior year math final but you’re in the wrong class and all your clothes are gone. Had it been a dream? Was he still dreaming now?

There are ways to check if you're dreaming- a good thing to know when you have a lot of nightmares. One is, _can you make stuff float or appear with your mind?_ (Assuming you're not already Wanda Maximoff.) Sam tries to levitate the dog bowl; it stays firmly on the floor. He pictures a bottle of gatorade, tries to feel the cool plastic in his hand, the drip of condensation onto his fingers. No dice. His head hurts. He leans back against the wall.

Other tests:

\- _Reading something twice to see if it stays the same?_ There's nothing but bare concrete and metal and hay. The dogs don't do a lot of graffiti, it seems.

\- _Jumping impossibly high, flying without the wings?_ Sam lines up his feet to stand, but when he shifts his weight everything hurts. He takes a rain check on the whole standing thing. Jumping is out of the question.

\- _Missing body parts?_ He's got some scrapes and bruises, but fingers and toes are all present and accounted for. Teeth taste a little bloody but none missing. He's still wearing the same clothes, and they're still a mess. He pulls a twig out of his boot.

\- _Hanging out with dead people?_ Sam tries to picture the reporters' faces, but can't push his memory any further than "nondescript white folks." No Riley, no Nanna Wilson, no dead celebrities or beloved childhood pets. Nobody he knew.

Except. In the hallway.

He'd stumbled into a door like the one in front of him, with the little reinforced window right where it's easy to look through. He'd seen inside. He'd seen a face staring back at him, one he recognized.

The Winter Soldier.

Fuck, it's gonna be one of _those_ nightmares.

 

* * *

 

The nightmare is a little different every time, but the meat of it is always the same: The Soldier hunts him down. He can run, he can try to fly or drive away, but there's no escape. Sometimes, in the chase, the Soldier slaughters people Sam cares about; sometimes Sam tries to save them. It doesn't matter. They die and the Soldier keeps coming, deliberate and unhurried.

In the end the spectre always catches up with him. It overpowers him easily, when he fights back at all. A few times the mask has come off and it was Riley under there; twice it was Steve. They don't recognize him, or maybe they don't care. The Soldier takes him apart, but the killing blow never stops the dream right away- Sam wakes up knowing what it feels like to spit out fragments of his own skull, or uselessly suck air through a slashed windpipe. Tough to get back to sleep after that.

Thinking about the Winter Soldier is like talking about Voldemort, apparently- as soon as Sam remembers that glimpse of his face, there's a shriek of twisting metal from outside. Shouts and running footsteps fill the hallway. After a moment, the commotion in the hall takes on a panicked tone. Sam catches a few words: _"Abort gas! Repeat, Abort gas!" "Get a vet down here, we need medical!" "NO, DON'T- "_

Shouting turns to screams. He hears gunfire. Something hits his door with a heavy thud, and the hallway is quiet.

A soft beep outside the door. The lock clicks. Sam drags himself to his feet, takes a deep breath, and squares up to face Death.

 

* * *

 

Death, it turns out, isn't looking so hot. It's Barnes, alright, but he's not in his murder gear. He's white as a sheet and leaning heavily on the doorframe. A long gash down his arm is soaking his whole right side with blood.

His eyes, though- they've got that predatory blankness, an icy rage that freezes Sam where he stands. He lunges for Sam's throat and there's no time to react- he's flung out into the hallway. A snapping sensation stings the back of his neck _(severed spine, that's a new one)_ as he trips backwards over a corpse and lands on his ass.

His attacker drops to one knee, still intent on Sam. The metal hand tosses something into his lap: a small box, crushed, attached to a broken band. A collar. That's what snapped. Aside from the whiplash, Sam's neck is fine.

"Go," the Soldier croaks. "Three floors up, south side. There's a loading bay. Get out of here."

Sam is on his feet and running before he can think, adrenaline drowning out the haziness and pain- but four steps in, he stops. Turns around. The Winter Soldier- James Buchannan Barnes- is on his knees, sagging into the frame of the open door. He's barefoot, dressed in what might be nurse's scrubs. His back is a pincushion of tranquilizer darts and the stain in his shirt is spreading, seeping into the waistband of his pants.

This isn't how the dream goes.

  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam squats down to his level and extends a hand. “Listen, just let me-”
> 
> The metal hand snatches his forearm and jerks him forward so their noses nearly touch. The Soldier’s eyes still have that wild animal look, like a pissed-off leopard. “Don't,” he snarls. “I'll fucking kill you, understand? I’ll kill you. Stay away from me.”
> 
> He shoves Sam away, using the momentum to attain a standing position. “Don't waste your time.” The Winter Soldier turns to leave, teeters briefly, and falls flat on his face. Sam waits a second. He doesn't get up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is kinda grisly. ( Contains graphic description of injuries, some of them fatal. )

Against every instinct and grain of common sense, Sam takes a step back towards the man who just killed four guards in as many seconds. He takes a breath.

"No, man. I gotta take you with me."

Blearily, Barnes lifts his head. "Wh? Nah, you were right the first time. Stairs’re that way."

"I'm not just gonna leave you here to bleed out, okay? I want to help."

"Oh, like hell you're not!" Barnes struggles to get his feet under him. "You know there's more coming, right? You have a window." His knees buckle before he can rise above a crouch, and he swears in Russian before glaring back at Sam. "Fuck off."

Sam squats down to his level and extends a hand. “Listen, just let me-”

The metal hand snatches his forearm and jerks him forward so their noses nearly touch. The Soldier’s eyes still have that wild animal look, like a pissed-off leopard. “Don't,” he snarls. “I'll fucking kill you, understand? I’ll kill you. Stay away from me.”

He shoves Sam away, using the momentum to attain a standing position. “Don't waste your time.” The Winter Soldier turns to leave, teeters briefly, and falls flat on his face. Sam waits a second. He doesn't get up.

* * *

So. The darts are easy enough to get rid of, and he needs them out before he can roll Barnes over. No problem. A quick sweep for injuries shows nothing else major, except for the long, massively hemorrhaging laceration all down the right arm. The cut isn't clean, but it's deep, and precise: armpit to elbow under the bicep, opening up nearly the whole brachial artery. Jesus.

A second gash extends down the inner forearm, but it's shallower, less targeted. It nicks a couple vessels, which almost doesn't matter with most of the blood supply gone before it can reach them. Still bad news, though. If the patient’s shirt is any indication, he's lost at least a liter and a half already, and even supersoldiers have their limits.

This would be a way more solvable problem if Sam had his kit on him, but the kit is with the wings and the wings are fuck knows where. (He still can't make things magically appear with his mind. Now would be a great time for that.) What he can do is this: jam one thumb into the end of the wound closest to the trunk, to block the bleeding at its source. (Try not to get sprayed in the face at this stage; it's basically like blocking the spout on a water fountain.) Use the other hand to remove his own belt and wrestle it into a tourniquet.

When he removes his thumb, the bleeding has slowed from a flood to a trickle. It's gonna have to be good enough; Sam has time to tear the ruined scrub shirt at the seams and wrap it into a quick bandage for the rest of the upper arm, but they need to move. Barnes looked dead serious when he said there'd be more coming. Better swipe what he can from the guards that are already down, so he can be ready for the ones still on their way.

They’ve all got Hydra patches on their uniforms, but three of the four guards were woefully under-equipped to handle a prisoner like the Winter Soldier; tasers and tranq rifles only. It's a wonder Barnes hadn't broken out earlier.

Sam takes a taser and a flashlight off a young-looking guard with his brains smashed all over the doorframe. The guy with his throat cut has a swiss army knife in his pocket that might come in handy. (Doesn't look like the knife is what killed him, though- all the blood is on a jagged rectangle of metal a few inches away, about the size of a credit card. Looks like a piece of something that got snapped off. Sam leaves it be.)

Only the oldest guy- dude in his 50’s with a caved-in rib cage- was packing any real heat. Sam peels the dead man’s fingers off his Sig Sauer, removes his belt and holster, rifles through his pockets to find two extra clips.

The last guard was thrown a few feet out of the fray, and it's tough to say whether he's technically still alive or not. His lungs are still dragging air through his bent-up windpipe, but the shape of his skull and the angle of his neck don't look compatible with life. Pupils don't contract in the beam of the flashlight. The guy's circling the drain, if he's not already brain-dead.

The kindest thing would be to finish him off, but Sam can't spare the ammo, and doing it any other way is just. He can't. It’s not like he's never killed anyone before, and this should be easier, even, both in the action and in the moral sense- but he can't do it. He clenches his fists and lets it go. He doesn't have time for this shit.

* * *

Moving Barnes presents a challenge of its own; the metal arm is slipperier than it looks, and the seams shift and pinch at his palm when he grabs it. And of course Sam can't put any strain on the other arm without doing more damage. He manages an awkward fireman’s carry, but the guy weighs as much as Steve, if not more, and the arm puts him way off-balance. Points of pain he’d been ignoring flare back to life in Sam’s shoulders and knees.

He's not gonna be able to keep this up for very long. He might not make it to the end of the hallway, let alone up three flights of stairs through whatever else Hydra has waiting for them. He's gonna need a better plan.

Hydra doesn't give him time to come up with one, though. There's a ‘ding’ from the elevator at the end of the hall, and in an instant black uniforms are pouring out, taking up a formation that blocks the whole hallway. Eight guys and three huge dogs. Shit.

For a brief moment Sam considers surrendering. They're clearly outgunned; Barnes is in no condition to fight, and frankly Sam might not be, either; he definitely can't fend them off while lugging around half a ton of passed-out assassin.

The moment breaks when three gas canisters come rolling and clattering towards his feet. Small objects approaching him at high velocity trigger Sam’s reflexive ‘Fuck no’ response; he punts them all back where they came from, and kicks in the nearest door as a volley of darts zip past his head.

It turns out, the door leads to a janitorial closet. Bad news, in that it's a dead end with no extra cover; good news in that it's full of household chemicals, and Sam _loved_ MacGuyver as a kid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm fait-hunter on tumblr too, come to my inbox & shriek with me ;D


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So the kiddie-glove treatment was definitely for Barnes's benefit, not his. Hydra's invested a lot in the Winter Soldier over the years; compared to that, Sam is expendable. Fair enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had to add 'Animal Cruelty / Animal Violence' to the tags for this one (nothing like, awful though)

He sets Barnes down at the back of the closet as gently as he can before ducking his head back out the door. The line has already started to advance. He gets three shots in- two grazes and a direct thigh hit that drops a guy right away. The returning fire is real bullets this time, not darts.

So the kiddie-glove treatment was definitely for Barnes's benefit, not his. Hydra's invested a lot in the Winter Soldier over the years; compared to that, Sam is expendable. Fair enough.

Four more shots: he cracks a guy’s visor and then gets him in the throat- looks like the gas masks aren't bulletproof. The man collapses in a bloom of red. Third shot’s a wide miss, fourth is a solid shoulder hit, right in the meat of the deltoid. The guy just switches hands and keeps shooting, but it might slow him down, at least. Six guards left, including the shoulder wound. The dogs are snarling and straining at their leashes, but their handlers are still holding them back. Sam ducks back into the supply closet.

He's not gonna have time for anything fancy, but there's plenty of material to work with. Drano bomb’s a classic- the bottle catches his eye right away, but it takes a second to find any aluminum. He's in luck, though: there's some foil rubber-banded over the mouth of a jar full of thumbtacks. Sam stuffs it into the bottle, twists the cap back on, and chucks it down the hallway as hard as he can.

It hits the closest goon in the face with a satisfying _thwack_ and explodes before it hits the ground. Some of the spray gets up under the guy’s visor- he’s clawing at his face, desperate to get the helmet off, and oh shit. He was a dog handler. He has let go of the leash and the massive hellhound he’d been holding back is now rocketing towards Sam with its lips curled back to reveal not one but _two_ rows of very shiny metal teeth-

Sam put the gun down to make the bomb, stupid mistake, he's got- he's still got the taser. The dog’s already in range- the probes connect and it goes down with a yelp, inertia still skidding it forward across the linoleum. A bullet clips the edge of Sam's ear and he jumps back, heart pounding.

Sam scrambles for the gun on the shelf where he left it- that's a mistake he can't afford to repeat. He spares a glance at the floor, at Bucky: still pale, still breathing. Still unconscious. That's as much as he can hope for.

He pops out for another exchange of gunfire. There's still five guys standing, and now the two remaining dogs are sprinting right for him, bigger than great danes and sleeker, more muscular, all black except for their creepy silver irises and creepier silver shark teeth.

In a panic he empties the rest of his clip- only six rounds, as it turns out- but the dogs don't even notice the superficial damage he manages to inflict, they're only a few short bounds from closing the distance to the closet-

He slams the door shut and braces it with his body. It won't slow them down much; the lock is already broken where he kicked it in, and the dogs definitely outweigh him. Sam barely has time to reload the sig before they hit like a battering ram, forcing the door a few inches open.

Instantly the doorframe is filled with snarling, snapping jaws and raking paws. Sam gets a shot across a muzzle but it just grazes- he can't get a good angle while still bracing the door. What he can do- and the idea sounds stupid as soon as it forms, but he doesn't have anything better- what he can do is reach across to the big jug of glass cleaner on the opposite shelf, and uncap it with a flick of his thumb.

He sloshes ammonia all over the exposed snouts, and the dogs actually withdraw, retching and gagging. Riding the wave of success, Sam opens the door a little wider to keep splashing them, aiming for the eyes- the dogs bark and growl but keep backing up, shaking their heads with their eyes squeezed shut.

Sam reaches back for that jar of thumbtacks from before and chucks it- it bounces off a dog's chest and shatters on the floor, dusting the area with tacks and broken glass. He drives it home with a warning shot at their feet that sends them skittering blindly back towards their masters.

Two more shots before he pulls back again- one lands uselessly on a guard’s body armor, but the next one gets him in the hip, below the protection of the vest. He drops. Four (human) hostiles left.

Sam got lucky, driving off the dogs, but they're bound to recover soon enough, and it's gonna take more than a few thumbtacks to stop them from coming back. He finds rubbing alcohol behind some other stuff at the back; rags hanging over the lip of a trash can; matches on the very top shelf. The plastic of the alcohol bottle might not be great for Molotov cocktail purposes, but if the janitor has a stash of cognac hidden somewhere, Sam hasn't been able to find it.

He lights the rag and chucks it down the hall towards the attackers- some genius shoots it, and it erupts in a fireball. Flames spewing from the mouth and bullet holes send the bottle spinning in a crazed whirligig all over the hallway, leaving dollops of fire behind it. The dogs work up a froth barking at it, but flinch away whenever it scoots in their direction.

The goons are having some kind of conversation, obscured from Sam by distance and continued barking. Sam uses the opportunity to take a couple more potshots while they're distracted, but nothing lands. Return fire zings against the metal frame of the door.

When he peeks out again, the guards are retreating, dragging their wounded and leaving behind the casualty and the tased dog. A handler kicks at the remaining dogs to shake their fixation on the flickering remains of the alcohol bottle; they follow him when he yanks at their leashes this time, but keep a wary eye on the thing like they think it’s possessed. The elevator dings again as the doors close. Everything is quiet.


End file.
